iMacs and "MacBook Pro"

Posted by: drakino

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 10/01/2006 20:27

Been waiting a while for this to finally happen. I'll be heading to my local reseller here in a bit to order the new MacBook Pro.

The only minor disappointment was that the CPU isn't the 2ghz Duo in it. But I'm not going to let that stop me from upgrading my 1.25 G4 system. It's been a good workhorse for 2.5 years, and I expect this new system will last just as long.

I'm also surprised that the case didn't change much. Beyond accommodating the new hardware for the isight and IR sensor, it's still the same. At least it should mean my case for the existing Powerbook will fit it.

Posted by: rob

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 10/01/2006 20:39

How nice of Mr Jobs to announce these on the day I get budget approval for a Mac project

Rather gorgeous looking laptop now ordered!

Rob

Posted by: msaeger

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 11/01/2006 00:42

Now just make one with a 10" screen that weighs 2lbs or less.

Posted by: DWallach

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 11/01/2006 00:57

Or, make something along the lines of the IBM/Lenovo X41 Tablet. I've been using it for a few months now, and while I like the general idea, I'd love to see an Apple interpretation of things like OneNote and Windows Journal Viewer. There's a whole lot of room for improvement.

(And, if I could buy Mac OS X to run on my existing IBM, I'd probably do it.)

Posted by: Dylan

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 11/01/2006 05:49

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I'm left un-impressed, where are the updates at the affordable end of the market?

I'm too lazy to find the article or exact numbers but I read that Apple pays ~$30 for the G4 chips and these Intel chips are ~$150. So Apple couldn't keep the same price points on their budget machines unless they were willing to accept a much lower profit or find other ways to lower the manufacturing cost.

Posted by: tman

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 11/01/2006 07:05

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I'm too lazy to find the article or exact numbers but I read that Apple pays ~$30 for the G4 chips and these Intel chips are ~$150.

One of the stories that went around when Apple originally said they were switching to Intel was that Intel were going to offer a very attractive discount per CPU.

What I find quite odd is the backlash that Apple have received from switching to Intel. Loads of postings from Mac fanboys who say they're never switching and how Apple have screwed up etc... What are the chances they'll buy it anyway?

At the end of the day, 95% of the people that use a Mac don't need to know what CPU is inside and probably wouldn't notice anyway. If it runs OS X and can run all your apps then whats the big deal?

Posted by: DWallach

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 11/01/2006 13:11

I agree that most users could care less about the CPU architecture unless they happen to be the sort of user who wants to run big-memory apps and really needs a 64-bit address space. For those users, it makes sense for Apple to stick with the G5's in the big tower configurations, at least until Intel goes x86-64 across their product line and Apple can do one final migration.

Probably the most intriguing feature on the new MacBook is that they dropped PCMCIA and went with ExpressCard/34. This is the next-generation standard from the PCMCIA people, and it comes in two form factors: one 34mm wide, and the other 54mm wide. Electrically, it's PCI Express, so it's blazingly fast. There's already one vendor offering a 5-in-1 memory card reader that will fit in the MacBook. However, the professional photographers are screwed by this. All the big cameras use CompactFlash, which is too big to fit in a 34mm slot. You need the larger 54mm slot. That requires some kind of external solution. Given Apple's big push into supporting pro photographers, you'd think they'd get this right.

Never mind that, by ditching PCMCIA, Apple is also making life rough for anybody with an EDGE of EV-DO card on their laptop. Maybe they're assuming that you'll just do everything with Bluetooth to your cel phone.

Posted by: tman

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 11/01/2006 13:42

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I agree that most users could care less about the CPU architecture unless they happen to be the sort of user who wants to run big-memory apps and really needs a 64-bit address space. For those users, it makes sense for Apple to stick with the G5's in the big tower configurations, at least until Intel goes x86-64 across their product line and Apple can do one final migration.

Yeah. That would make the most sense. Yet another big recompile stage coming up in the future then...

Quote:
Probably the most intriguing feature on the new MacBook is that they dropped PCMCIA and went with ExpressCard/34. This is the next-generation standard from the PCMCIA people, and it comes in two form factors: one 34mm wide, and the other 54mm wide. Electrically, it's PCI Express, so it's blazingly fast.

ExpressCard is USB 2 as well. It is up to the manufacturer of the card to decide what to use. I guess a majority of cards will be USB 2 anyway so the manufacturer can just release it in a little external box for desktop PCs as well.

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 12/01/2006 20:38

Tom, when you get the new machine post here about its size. I'll have a closer look at the numbers on Apple's page, but from the images it looks bigger (except in thickness). This is now a 15.4" screen where PowerBooks sport a 15.2" variety.

I'm waiting a few months for a new portable so I may end up with a 17" when those come out. But if I went with a 15" I might have to give up the current Booq Vyper shell I have anyway.

In the meantime I'll probably pick up the cheaper iMac to make sure our code comppiles and runs on Intel systems.

EDIT:
Yup, it's bigger. 9mm wider and 2mm deeper. Anyone else also notice the superdrive in this system won't record dual layer nor is it as fast as previous models (4x compared to 8x)? And that the screen is LOWER resolution than the 15.2" model in the last PB revision... Yuck. Saving grace is that it's 16:10 like their desktop displays. I'd still have preferred 1600x1000 though.

Bruno

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 12/01/2006 21:01

FWIW, I believe you can compile for Intel using PowerPC Macs. Of course, there's not much way to test it until you get an Intel-based Mac, but at least you can work out any compile bugs beforehand.

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 12/01/2006 21:14

I fear that a lot of PC users might have a lot of unrealistic expectations out there about the Intel-based Macs. Take the current front page of Penny-Arcade. Those guys are at least reasonably knowledgeable about computers, even if not in-depth, and they're saying things like:

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Let a single hardware spec run both operating systems and be done with it.

The notion that they're the same hardware spec is simply absurd. That's like saying that an empeg and an Acorn are the same because they use the same processor.

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Apple has succeeded in cracking my resolve.

Why? Because they use a hardware component that you'll never interact with directly? That's kind of like switching to Apple because they started using UHCI USB ports instead of OHCI. Who cares?

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Some people are telling me that the new MacBook won’t run certain software. All I really need to know is will the damn thing play WOW?

I don't know. Maybe WOW is available for the Mac. But I have this feeling that they might be expecting it to run Windows apps just because it has an Intel processor.

I have a feeling that there's going to be a big backlash against Apple when these unrealistic expectations come crashing to the ground and people find that they can't actually run Windows software on them.

Edit: Okay, I've just been told that I'm a complete moron and that they can be rebooted to run Windows. Scary.

Posted by: DWallach

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 12/01/2006 21:43

There must be something different about the machine, if for no other reason than to help OS X detect if it's on a non-Apple box and refuse to boot.

Posted by: tman

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 12/01/2006 22:22

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There must be something different about the machine, if for no other reason than to help OS X detect if it's on a non-Apple box and refuse to boot.

No clue. There probably is an extra chip/device hanging off the internal bus that it talks to which verifies that it is an official Apple machine. The developer machines had a TPM chip.

Posted by: adavidw

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 13/01/2006 03:30

Quote:
Edit: Okay, I've just been told that I'm a complete moron and that they can be rebooted to run Windows. Scary.

Well that question's still up for discussion. Currently, Windows doesn't support EFI, although some (if not all) EFI implementations include a BIOS emulation mode. Either way, I've read some informed speculation, and lots of uninformed speculation, but nobody's actually tried it yet since the machines aren't out there yet.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 13/01/2006 03:39

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Either way, I've read some informed speculation, and lots of uninformed speculation, but nobody's actually tried it yet since the machines aren't out there yet.

Yeah, but this sounds really freakin' promising.

Posted by: andy

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 13/01/2006 04:31

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Okay, I've just been told that I'm a complete moron and that they can be rebooted to run Windows.

Hopefully it won't even require rebooting. The processors in the new Macs support the latest Intel machine virtualization technology, which makes it even easier to run one OS within another.

I expect to see versions of VMWare and Virtual PC for the Intel Mac that run Windows at pretty much full native speed.

If this really happens I think my next desktop machine may well be a Mac running OS X and Windows at the same time...

Posted by: drakino

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 13/01/2006 06:33

I'll take some photos of it alongside my existing Powerbook G4 to see how noticeable the difference is.

Quote:
. Anyone else also notice the superdrive in this system won't record dual layer nor is it as fast as previous models (4x compared to 8x)? And that the screen is LOWER resolution than the 15.2" model in the last PB revision... Yuck. Saving grace is that it's 16:10 like their desktop displays. I'd still have preferred 1600x1000 though.

Apparently the slimming of the case prevented Apple from fitting in the 8x/DL burners. Doesn't bother me too much, I do only a little DVD burning, and my system is a 2x drive, so still an upgrade.

Screen res, also not a huge deal to me. The system did go from 1440x960 to 1440x900. In the move, Apple went to the standard 16:10 LCDs used in the rest of the industry, instead of the 15:10 screens they used. Should avoid their screens lagging too far behind again, and also avoid issues like the complaints on the newer PowerBook screens. And for me, I'm at 1280x854 currently, so again an upgrade for me. And until the DPI independent stuff is brought forward in Lepoard, I'd prefer it to not go too far beyond the 110ish DPI range.

Regarding World of Warcraft, Blizzard shipped it day 1 in the same box for PC and Mac. They are one of the best gaming companies for supporting both sides. And they will have Universal binaries for the new Intel Macs free of charge for all existing subscribers by the end of January. WoW is a big deal to 5 million people around the world (and still growing). So the fact that it works on the Mac, including all the in game mods is actually a big deal. I know some people at work very likely to look at a Mac laptop now with the performance jump, OS X, and perfect WoW support.

Regarding Windows, the issue is that no 32 bit version currently supports EFI, however the x64 and IA64 versions do. The new Macs are all 32 bit, so Windows won't boot natively. The question now would be is if Apple is shipping the backwards compatibility part of EFI in the systems to still be able to boot Windows. Thus far, it seem no hackers ran out and grabbed the iMacs to try it, but probably soon more info should be out there. Apple has stated many times they have no intent to block other OSs from running on the Macs, but they will try to protect OS X. Oh, and apparently Gateway has been shipping some Media Center boxes running 32 bit processors and EFI. Either MS added EFI support to Media Center XP, or Gateway is relying on the backwards compatibility aspect. I've not personally looked into it too much to see where the major issue is. My guesses are the lack of a compatible boot loader, and also the lack of support for GPT disks over MBR disks.

Vista will support EFI in their 32 bit versions.

Posted by: DWallach

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 13/01/2006 15:27

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If this really happens I think my next desktop machine may well be a Mac running OS X and Windows at the same time...

You'll need a whole lot of memory to make that work effectively. VMware had a paper at OSDI a few years ago about how to better make multiple OS's cooperate when running under VM. The idea was that they put a kernel-level driver in each OS. When the VM system decides it wants to take memory back from one OS, then the driver just allocates a bunch of physical pages and pins them. The VM system knows that those aren't "real" pages, so it can give the memory back to the other OS by having the cooresponding driver unpin its own pre-allocated pages. I don't know when/if this sort of technology will make its way into commercial virtualization systems, but it's going to be necessary to let two memory hog OS's run together.

Posted by: Phoenix42

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 13/01/2006 17:04

Dan, what you are talking about sounds a lot like the "memory balloon driver" in VMware ESX. This comes into play when the memory requirements of all the VMs exceeds the available physical memory. ESX will inflate the balloon on the lower priority VMs forcing the guest OS in those VM to decide what pages to page out to their swap file.
I don't know if this driver exists in the other VMware products.

Posted by: DWallach

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 13/01/2006 17:42

Yup, that's it. I didn't realize it had found its way into their commercial products.

Posted by: mcomb

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 14/01/2006 23:26

I ordered the higher end MacBook Pro (hate the name, but what are you going to do) the day after the keynote. Should be a big improvement over my current 1ghz powerbook. I also took the opportunity to signup for Apple's Select Developer program since the hardware discount offered with it effectively made it free. I've got a ship date of "By Feb 15th" at this point.

-Mike

Posted by: drakino

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 21/02/2006 05:36

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Tom, when you get the new machine post here about its size.

Looks like someone was busy with their new arrival today. He posted several photos comparing it to the older 15 inch Powerbook. Mine should hopefully get to my reseller tomorrow, but with my luck they will call before I board a plane at around 5pm. Always my luck, seems I have to fly out of town to summon my Apple portables. My Powerbook came in while I was in New York with Rob R. in 2003.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 03/04/2006 12:47

So, who's got their MacBook Pro? Mine's on order, but I'm a wee bit nervous about some of the Rev A problems people are reporting. Any comments from the peanut gallery?

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 03/04/2006 17:36

Yeah, people are reporting some apparently fixed issues with the latest revisions. I think there are some updated reports on Macintouch and XLR8YourMac. I'm waiting until the 17" model is released to decide between form factors for my next machine. At that point I think my new hire will get this 1.5GHz 15" PB for development.

Bruno

Posted by: mcomb

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 03/04/2006 19:16

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So, who's got their MacBook Pro? Mine's on order, but I'm a wee bit nervous about some of the Rev A problems people are reporting. Any comments from the peanut gallery?

I've had mine for a while now. No problems at all so far, I was expecting a few early adopter issues, but they haven't hit me yet. It has been more solid (and generally faster) than my Rev A Dual G5 tower.

-Mike

Posted by: matthew_k

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 03/04/2006 19:20

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Any comments from the peanut gallery?

I've been lusting after one ever since that post. I'd certainly get apple care for it if I were to take the plunge. The G4's are just so much slower compared to the new processors, and their battery life is even worse than the MBP.

The only thing holding me back (besides financial realities, and owning 3 PB G4 batteries and 4 PB G4 power cords) is that the killer app for this machine is VMWare, and there hasn't been a peep about it out of VMware except that it probably couldn't happen until after leopard.

Matthew

Posted by: drakino

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 04/04/2006 01:32

I'm enjoying mine quite a bit. It's very speedy, much more so then the old Powerbook. I do have the whine others hear when it is on battery and idle, but it seems software might be able to fix this. Haven't tried under the newly released 10.4.6 yet, though I rarely notice it.

I had Windows dual booting on it the day I got mine, as the contest details came out then. I'm not doing much with it right now, but once video drivers come out, I'll use it for gaming. And once that happens, I'll also sell off the Dell brick XPS laptop.

Overall, well worth the money spent. I managed to sell the old Powerbook for $1500, so the upgrade cost came out to be around $1000. Not bad for what I got out of it.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 04/04/2006 15:20

Quote:

The only thing holding me back (besides financial realities, and owning 3 PB G4 batteries and 4 PB G4 power cords) is that the killer app for this machine is VMWare, and there hasn't been a peep about it out of VMware except that it probably couldn't happen until after leopard.

Keep an eye on this in the meantime.

Posted by: matthew_k

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 04/04/2006 15:31

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Keep an eye on this in the meantime.

Oooh. I certainly will. I've never heard of Parallels, anyone know how their product compares to vmware and virtualpc?

Matthew

Posted by: mlord

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 04/04/2006 15:36

Quote:

Keep an eye on this in the meantime.

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"VMware has started giving away VMware Workstation"

They really should review their articles for correctness..

Posted by: matthew_k

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 04/04/2006 15:39

My thoughts exactly when I read that...

Matthew

Posted by: matthew_k

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 06/04/2006 15:01

Sweet. I'm gonna have to get me one of those macbook pros now. Anyone want to buy a lovingly trated 15" powerbook? It's a beautiful machine.

Matthew

Posted by: matthew_k

Re: iMacs and "MacBook Pro" - 06/04/2006 17:41

The bad news is that the mac mini doesn't support intel's virtualization technology, so it's not as fast as the MBP/iMac. The good news is that nothing else supports intel's virtualization technology, so it still shouldn't be any slower then VMware on windows. I ordered my parents a duo mac mini as they've been asking for a new computer for a few months now and I've been resisting until something like this was available.

Matthew

Posted by: tonyc

Why, you ask? Why not! - 19/04/2006 15:38

Got my Macbook Pro last week, and loving it to death. Been toying around with Parallels Workstation and I think it's going to make VMWare irrelevant on OS X. I was able to play MP3s and videos in WinAMP, and even run Winamp AVS fullscreen, about as fast as they run on my Athlon XP box at home. I don't need Windows that often, but when I do, it'll be nice to have.

On the other hand, maybe I'll just use it for silly things like this.

Posted by: mlord

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 19/04/2006 15:48

Quote:
Got my Macbook Pro last week, and loving it to death. Been toying around with Parallels Workstation and I think it's going to make VMWare irrelevant on OS X

Mmm.. looks promising, but it's got a bit of a steep hill or five before it matches VMWare's capabilities. Mind ya, right now PW is the only game in town (beta) for OS X. But that'll change.

Cheers

Posted by: hybrid8

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 19/04/2006 17:07

Since I'm not familiar with VMWare, and because I think Parallels' solution won't be the only option for long, what are these adantages you mentioned?

I think my needs are going to be pretty modest, but there are a few usability features that will really influence my opinion. I'd probably prefer to use the program with a Windows application set to full screen, so I could get as close as possible to haveing that missing application blend in with my desktop.

I'd love a solution that could run a Windows application within a window that offered a (real-time) resizable virtual desktop without all the Windows/Explorer stuff in/on it (so resizing the parent window would seamlessly resize the application window running inside it). Anything that would get me as close as possible to a plain application window on my Mac OS desktop for that hosted program.

Bruno

Posted by: mlord

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 19/04/2006 20:07

Quote:
Since I'm not familiar with VMWare, and because I think Parallels' solution won't be the only option for long, what are these adantages you mentioned?

Snapshot trees, for one. The ability to simply "resume" a virtual machine from some arbitrary saved state is priceless. Want to try out some new s/w? Snapshot the machine, download and install the new stuff, try it out -- oops spyware-ridden or just plain not suitable? Hit "revert" and it's all gone. Magic. Or, okay it's nice, then just suspend the machine there, take a snapshot of it to go back to someday, and then click on the previous snapshot to run other stuff on a separate branch. And so on. Huge feature set there.

Virtual networks and "teams" of VMs. start with one good VM. Clone it into three or four, and set up virtual network LANs between them in various combinations to test server scenarios (or just to partition real servers).

Resizeable desktops, autofit / fitnow for resolutions.

Plug and play USB devices in the VMs -- any physical USB device can be moved to/from the VM and host O/S. I have used this for a zillion things. EDIT: Eg. for the LogicPort analyser gizmo, who's software requires MS-Win.

Virtual memory, multi-CPUs per VM, etc..

All of the packages will eventually all do this stuff, but VMware has been doing it all for a long time on regular PC (Linux/Win) systems, so one would expect them to offer it for the Mac shortly.

Cheers

Posted by: tonyc

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 19/04/2006 20:55

I'd say they're aiming at different user levels. The features you describe are mostly power user type things, and they come at VMWare's power user price. Parallels Workstation sets you back a whopping $50, about 1/4 the price of VMWare.

I'd say there's definitely enough room for both in the marketplace, and VMware better watch their asses on the more advanced stuff.

Posted by: mlord

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 19/04/2006 21:01

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The features you describe are mostly power user type things

No, I don't think so.

The snapshot capability provides "instant-on" when starting a foreign app, say MS-Office or something. It's just there and running instantly, without having to wait for windows to boot. That feature is for *everybody*.

The USB device support is also for Joe Average as well as for "power users". Say you get a new digicam, but the software is windows-only. Just plug it in, and use it with windows running inside VMware. Piece-O-Cake.

Cheers

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 19/04/2006 21:10

Most, if not all, of those features are available in VMware Server, which sets you back a whopping $0, about one-infinitieth the price of Parallels Workstation.

Posted by: tonyc

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 19/04/2006 23:06

Quote:
Most, if not all, of those features are available in VMware Server, which sets you back a whopping $0, about one-infinitieth the price of Parallels Workstation.

Hm, I can't seem to find the link to the OS X version.

Posted by: drakino

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 20/04/2006 02:28

One big feature of VMWare that I would like for my MacBook is the ability to use a real hard disk partition for the guest OS instead of a virtual disk file. That way, I can boot Windows inside VMWare in OS X to do development in Visual Studio, or reboot into Windows XP and run a game, without needing two copies of Windows on the disk.

Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 20/04/2006 12:51

You were already talking about VMware and comparing prices. I was just pointing out the same class of facts you were.

Posted by: Phoenix42

Re: Why, you ask? Why not! - 20/04/2006 13:45

Note: VMware Server is beta software so preformance may lag and as with any beta it may be buggy. However once GA it will continue to cost $0.

iMacs and "MacBook Pro"